The gymnasium-bath house complex covered 23.000 square metres. It’s built in the “Imperial Style”, implying that it is symmetrical along one axis, with at one end a central hot house (caldarium). It is supposed to have been completed in the middle of the second century AD . It has been repaired and modified through the following centuries, until it was abandoned following the Sassanid invasion in 616.

This is a view of the central hall. You should realise that almost all pictures I here present are of just the central hall, which was the most decorated part of the complex. We have just entered through a side entrance, the mirror of the one straight ahead.